Hip Hallelujah

I had what was hopefully my last physiotherapy appointment this morning. I blogged last year that I was experiencing severe pain when I tried to run, which is problematic since running is one of my main forms of exercise. Since then (December 2009) I've been going to the Glen Sather facility at the University of Alberta. I picked the Glen Sather because it was close and it was anticipated that they would be familiar with dealing with an injury like mine. I also guessed that they've would have some pretty good PTs working there. I'm quite lucky, as it only took 4 visits for the problem with my iliotibial band to heal up. I still have to do stretches everyday, and a series of strength moves twice a week, but I can eventually phase those out once I've worked my way down to zero pain.

I still get a small amount of pain or discomfort in my knee, although usually when I'm not paying attention and sit at my desk with my legs crossed and tucked under my chair. It's pretty minimal though (I'd rate it at a 1 or 2 out of 10--compared to the 8 I experienced before). I find a well placed ice pack sooths the ache quite nicely. Interestingly, I tend not to feel any pain when I'm running; a good thing, since I'm now working on rebuilding my endurance. At the end of the summer, before my injury occurred, Andrew and I were running around 18 kilometres on Saturday mornings. I would like to get back to that and even push beyond up to marathon length runs. Right now I can handle about 7 kilometres before I feel completely exhausted.

We haven't decided on a race yet, but I would like to enter something this year. Unfortunately, we won't be able to fit in the Calgary race this May, as our European trip will interrupt our training for it. I would like to run something with a sizable number of participants--I like running with hundreds of other people on the course with me--so I'll have to start looking to see what I can find.

Ciao,

Andrea